HIV and AIDS: The Epidemic Essay example

HIV has affected people all across the world. HIV comes with physical and mental symptoms. The body symptoms include skin flaking off, being dry, skin peeling off (Saliba 23) , fingernails falling off (32), and weight loss (14). Mentally it is hard to sleep, people become weak, and are tired all the time (23). People all across the world are infected with this disease, and the problem with this is the fact that most do not even know they have it. The most people who are infected each year are African Americans, gays, or bisexuals. 10,315 African Americans were infected in 2015. The U.S.A. has estimated about 1.1 million are infected with the disease. Equally to about 12,333 deaths happened in 2014 from AIDS related diseases, and 6,721 deaths from AIDS directly. Although there are a large amount of people getting infected, on the other hand eighteen percent of the population with HIV is declining since 2008-2014 (“U.S. Statistics”). In the world about 33.2 million people worldwide have HIV, with 22.5 million people in sub Saharan Africa are living with this condition, one out of nine people who live in South America have HIV or AIDS (Saliba 8).

HIV or the Human Deficiency virus is like other viruses including the flu, but the one thing that makes this virus so different than any other is that the body is unable to clear this one out completely. Once someone is infected, there is no cure. Over time, HIV can also hide or mask itself in the body's cells. The cells within a person's body that fight off infection are called CD4 cells or T cells. HIV attacks these cells and copies or replicates itself inside these cells, then destroys them. HIV over time will destroy so many of these cells that the body is unable to fight off infection anymore. When this starts happening, AIDS or Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome happens which is the final stage

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 50,000 people are infected with HIV each year. In 2010, the most recent year for which this information is available, there were around 47,500 new HIV infections in the United States (p. 1). The population of people with HIV is diverse due to the fact that it does not discriminate. Men and women of any age,

Many individuals have this malnourished ideal that HIV/AIDS is a disease based on race. “AIDS; which has ravaged minority community in disproportionately large numbers, must be viewed as racial issue, the national commission member on AIDS said yesterday” (Priest). Years ago Yale University law professor Harlon Dalton said this about HIV/AIDS, “We cannot approach the AIDS problem in a color blind fashion” (Priest). With this being said we need to stop pointing fingers at blacks’ for the disproportionate factor of HIV in this country. And also stop pointing fingers at black homosexuals.

This history of HIV/AIDS as a blurry timeline before the 1980’s since that was around the time reports came in which eventually become an HIV report. The origin of HIV can be traced back to the early part of the century. Some believe that in the 1920’s chimpanzees from the Congo came into contact with humans (Avert, 2016). Though reports were not identified as HIV until the 1980’s, the belief that HIV was already scattered throughout four other continents may have been incident (Avert, 2016). Even though for the past 30 years the world has been diligently working to find a cure and pushing prevention, we are still struggling each year with increasing diagnosis. The beginning of HIV did end with lots of death, but now with our improved antiviral medication there is hope for many.

According to recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 1.2 million individuals in the United States have HIV (about 14 percent of which are unaware of their infection and another 1.1 million have progressed to AIDS. Over the past decade, the number of HIV cases in the US has increased, however, the annual number of cases remains stable at about 50, 000 new cases per year. Within these estimates, certain groups tend to carry the burden of these disease, particularly the gay, bisexual, and men who have sex with men (MSM) and among race/ethnic groups, Blacks/African American males remain disproportionately affected. (CDC)

According to a report published in the February 1998 edition of “Nature”, scientists identified what they believe is the earliest case of AIDs in a man from the Congo in 1959. (Lerner and Hombs 39) By the end of the year 1980, 80 men would have been diagnosed with at least of the opportunistic infections that are a characteristic of AIDs. (Lerner and Hombs 40) AIDs cases in the 1980s increased dramatically not only around the world but in the United States, primarily in larger cities like Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. The numbers of AIDs diagnoses and deaths spiraled out of control throughout the 1980s and towards the end of 1989 there were 117,500 cases of AIDS reported and 89,000 related deaths.(Lerner and Hombs 54) In the

In the 1980s, a mysterious disease began to take the lives of Americans. With the cause unknown, a fear grew among Americans. An unusually high rate of people was becoming sick with strange and rare diseases. When experimental treatments failed to work, people died. This mysterious disease is what we now know as HIV–Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In the past thirty-five years, the HIV has taken many turns in history. Although we do not hear about HIV and AIDS now, it is still a prevalent issue in the United States and in the world.

HIV/AIDS is acquired when there is an unprotected sexual intercourse, exposure to infected blood or body fluids, sharing of needles or syringes with an infected person and from mother to child through breast feeding or vaginal birth. The most prevalent places are the urban cites in the U.S. As discussed earlier, the population at risk for the infection are gay and bisexuals, IV drug users and heterosexuals. Within the first two weeks of acquiring HIV infection, the infected person develops fever usually 100.4degrees, fatigue, sore throat, headache, muscle and joint pains. This normally resolves itself without any intervention. Some people might also develop a digestive and respiratory problem such as nausea &vomiting and dry cough. If untreated, it can result in low TCD4 lymphocyte count below 200 resulting in AIDS. Statistically, from the national level, the most prevalent states in the U.S in

In the 21st century, everyone has heard of the frightening HIV and AIDS virus. The disease we first discovered in 1983 in Arica, when it killed millions of people, especially poor people and travelers. In the developing countries, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) are considered a death sentence, the world over, it is a frightening virus that has killed many people.

In 1920, HIV originated in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo when it crossed species from chimpanzees to humans. Up until the 1980s, researchers did not know how many people were infected with this disease. HIV was completely unknown and the transmission was not connected with the noticeable signs or symptoms. Also, HIV may have already spread to five continents of the world: North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Australia. In this period, between 100,000 and 300,000 people could have already been infected. In June 1982, a of cases among gay men in Southern California suggested that the cause of the Human immune deficiency or HIV was sexually transmitted. This disease was initially called gay-related immune deficiency or “GRID”.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world that is most affected by HIV/AIDS. The United Nations reports that an estimated 25.4 million people are living with HIV and that approximately 3.1 million new infections occurred in 2004. To put these figures in context, more than 60 percent of the people living with the infection reside in Africa. Even these staggering figures do not quite capture the true extent and impact that this disease causes on the continent. In 1998, about 200,000 Africans died as a result of various wars taking place on the continent. In that same year, more than 2 million succumbed to HIV/AIDS (Botchwey, 2000).

HIV goes beyond race and ethnicity, into a category that is called ‘Transmission Category’. The most at risk group here are gay and bisexual men, which are noted for making up 67% of all new HIV diagnoses compared to heterosexual sex which accounts for 24% of new diagnoses (CDC, 2015). Another group that is considered to be most at risk for HIV infection are

HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. A member of a group of viruses called retroviruses, HIV infects human cells and uses the energy and nutrients provided by those cells to grow and reproduce. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a disease in which the body's immune system breaks down and is unable to fight off certain infections, known as "opportunistic infections," and other illnesses that take advantage of a weakened immune system. When a person is infected with HIV, the virus enters the body and lives and multiplies primarily in the white blood cells. These are the immune cells that normally protect us from disease.

HIV is a virus that is spread almost all over the world. Although in some places health care isn’t as developed and therefore it spreads more in those regions. Sub-Saharan Africa holds more than 70%, 25 million, of all HIV positive people in the world. Second highest is Eastern Europe together with Central Asia with 1.3 million. It is spread over most of the world, including Asia and the Pacific, the Caribbean, Central and South America, North Africa and the Middle East and Western and Central Europe (“The Regional Picture”).